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Bogged Down and Lifted Up
Sep. 10th, 2003 11:15 amI'm writing myself in circles, and I'm frustrated. I feel the words wrap around my arms like seaweed, pulling me down, entrenching me, but I can't wiggle out and go forward. I want to cry and I want to give up, and there's really nothing to do but keep writing until the frustration builds up enough to spark a change, but then I get crazy and quiet and can't sleep.
So I went searching through the things that normally inspire me, writing that just makes me sigh and lay down my proverbial pen. Forgive the choice of excerpts - I wanted the words this moment and Amazon had an odd collection of sample pages.
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Every four days she washes his black body, begginng at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it aboce his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone.
She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea hore, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint.
My favorite passage from this is when he traces the saffron over Katherine's body, and talks of love and blood and the curve of her throat.
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently and was not deep, and the sky was swept with vibrant stars, except in the east, where dawn was beginning in a light blue flood. The air was motionless, but would soon start to move as the sun came up and winds from Canada came charging down the Hudson.
The horse had escaped from his master's small clapboard stable in Brooklyn. He trotted alone over teh carriage road of the Williamsburg Bridge, before the light, while the toll keeper was sleeping by his stove and many stars were still blazing above the city. Fresh snow on the bridge muffled his hoofbeats, and he sometimes turned his head and looked behind him to see if he was being followed.
There's nothing in this book that I don't love, but the moment when Peter and Beverly come together - her flushed with comsumption and youth and love and he, an intruder, capitvated, balding and overwhelmed, that's one of my favorite passages of words and pacing.
There are so many books that I've loved, read over and over again in wonderment, whether out of love for the characters or the story or the writing, but these two books are ones that pull it all together and leave me lost in the words. I mentioned on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whitelight1's LJ that I like the feel of certain sentences, the lushness in the mouth, the pacing and placement of the words and these two books just pull me into the language so deeply that I'm happy to stay lost.
Ballet was excellent last night, and we actually accomplished something in rehearsal by rechoreographing the same dance yet again. It's for Halloween. There's been talk of wearing cat ears. I'm not sure what to think of this, but at least it's not pointy teeth. Of course, I've been negating the good done by ballet this morning by stealing all the Mr. Goodbar's from the Hershey's minatures in the candy dish.
So I went searching through the things that normally inspire me, writing that just makes me sigh and lay down my proverbial pen. Forgive the choice of excerpts - I wanted the words this moment and Amazon had an odd collection of sample pages.
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Every four days she washes his black body, begginng at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it aboce his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone.
She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea hore, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint.
My favorite passage from this is when he traces the saffron over Katherine's body, and talks of love and blood and the curve of her throat.
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently and was not deep, and the sky was swept with vibrant stars, except in the east, where dawn was beginning in a light blue flood. The air was motionless, but would soon start to move as the sun came up and winds from Canada came charging down the Hudson.
The horse had escaped from his master's small clapboard stable in Brooklyn. He trotted alone over teh carriage road of the Williamsburg Bridge, before the light, while the toll keeper was sleeping by his stove and many stars were still blazing above the city. Fresh snow on the bridge muffled his hoofbeats, and he sometimes turned his head and looked behind him to see if he was being followed.
There's nothing in this book that I don't love, but the moment when Peter and Beverly come together - her flushed with comsumption and youth and love and he, an intruder, capitvated, balding and overwhelmed, that's one of my favorite passages of words and pacing.
There are so many books that I've loved, read over and over again in wonderment, whether out of love for the characters or the story or the writing, but these two books are ones that pull it all together and leave me lost in the words. I mentioned on
whitelight1's LJ that I like the feel of certain sentences, the lushness in the mouth, the pacing and placement of the words and these two books just pull me into the language so deeply that I'm happy to stay lost.Ballet was excellent last night, and we actually accomplished something in rehearsal by rechoreographing the same dance yet again. It's for Halloween. There's been talk of wearing cat ears. I'm not sure what to think of this, but at least it's not pointy teeth. Of course, I've been negating the good done by ballet this morning by stealing all the Mr. Goodbar's from the Hershey's minatures in the candy dish.
